Bersanov has risen far enough inside Russian intelligence to matter and far enough to be destroyed by exactly the kind of scrutiny that comes with real power. When a rival on the confirmation board begins building a case that Bersanov’s results are too convenient to be entirely his own, CIA officers Phil Swain and Tatiyana Druyanova find themselves doing something they never intended: manufacturing evidence to help a Russian officer survive his own institution’s judgment. It is not the only debt coming due. Berlin station chief Merrick has spent thirty years guarding a compromise inherited long before Swain ever arrived, and someone patient enough to wait three decades has just decided the time has come to collect. As the board convenes in Moscow and old obligations surface faster than anyone can contain them, Swain must decide how much of himself an institution is entitled to spend on behalf of a man who was never fully on either side and what it costs to protect people, guilty and otherwise, from the consequences of what they’ve done. Moscow Express is a novel about the quiet architecture of loyalty: what institutions choose not to see, what men choose not to confess, and what it costs everyone when patience, on both sides, finally runs out.

A Phil Swain novel, following Breakpoint, Transit to Tehran, and Stopover in Leningrad.